1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a technological field of an information recording apparatus and a method thereof, an information reproducing apparatus and a method thereof, an information recording program and an information reproducing program, a recording medium and an information recording medium, and in particular, to the technological field of the information recording apparatus and method thereof, the information reproducing apparatus and method thereof, the information recording program and information reproducing program for reproducing record information distributed via a network while protecting copyright thereon, the information recording medium having each of the programs recorded thereon and the recording medium having the distributed record information recorded thereon.
2. Description of the Related Art
In recent years, research and development has been underway on recording formats for recording audio information including music information and voice information on recording mediums such as a DVD (Digital Versatile Disc).
On the other hand, so-called music distribution (commonly referred to as EMD: Electronics Music Distribution) is being started recently for distributing the above audio information via a network such as the Internet to personal computers for individual use, for example. Thus, it is desirable that the above recording format currently under development also conforms to this music distribution method.
Now, in the current music distribution there are several distribution methods (that is compression techniques used in the distribution) incompatible with each other such as the AC-3 (Audio Compression-3) method or the MP3 (MPEG (Moving Picture Expert Group) 1 Audio Layer 3) method.
As for the information recording apparatus (to be more specific, a DVD recorder for instance) used to record the music information and so on distributed as above on a DVD or the like, it is seldom used only for that purpose. In reality, it is usually constituted to be also used to record on the DVD the music information and so on reproduced by a DVD player, for instance, directly connected to the information recording apparatus other than the distributed music information.
On the other hand, the music information distributed by music distribution is generally protected by copyright law, and so the distributed music information must be effectively protected from being freely copied without permission of a copyright holder thereof. To review the information recording apparatus from this viewpoint, it is possible to perform so-called dubbing of the music information and so on from the DVD player or the like in the case where the music information and so on are not protected by copyright law. Therefore, it is necessary, in this case, that the distributed (copyright-law-protected) music information and so on and other music information and so on should be clearly distinguished on the DVD or the like having them mixedly recorded thereon and then the distributed music information and so on should be effectively protected by the copyright law.
However, in the case of the above-mentioned music distribution methods in the past, if the music information distributed by each of the methods is to be recorded as-is on the recording medium such as the DVD, there exist on one recording medium a mixture of several types of music information compressed by different compression techniques. Consequently, in the cases of reproducing the music information recorded on the recording medium, one information reproducing apparatus must conform to the types of compression technique.
Therefore, in this case, there were a problem of unsecured “compatibility in reproduction process”, and a problem that attempting to conform the compression techniques with each other in the information reproducing apparatus increases manufacturing costs extremely.
This problem leads to another problem that the increased manufacturing costs of the information reproducing apparatus lead to the soaring of the total manufacturing costs of the information recording/reproducing system including the information reproducing apparatus and an information recording apparatus for recording the music information on the recording medium, thereby preventing the information recording/reproducing system from being widely used.
From the viewpoint of the copyright law, the method of music distribution in the past had a problem that no thought was given to distinguishing the music information and so on distributed and recorded on the DVD or the like according to this method from any other music information, and furthermore, little thought was given to protection by the copyright law by controlling the reproduction aspects in the case of reproducing the distributed music information and so on after the distribution, and consequently the distributed music information and so on were not sufficiently protected by the copyright law.